McGovern takes aim at big corporate donors

Friday

Jan 25, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Jacqueline Reis TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern has introduced two bills he hopes will reverse the impact of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which in a 5-4 decision essentially allowed businesses to give unlimited amounts of money for political advocacy without disclosing who they are.

“I think there is too much money in politics,” Mr. McGovern said in a small event announcing the bills at Clark University Thursday evening. “Excessive amounts of money, I believe, are corrupting our political process and undermining our democracy … Members of Congress spend too much time dialing for dollars.”

Large campaign contributors can shape how legislators vote, and the media often use the size of a candidates’ purse to judge how serious a candidate he or she is, Mr. McGovern said.

The first of Mr. McGovern’s proposed constitutional amendments would give Congress the ability to regulate what is raised and spent in political campaigns. The second he calls the “People’s Rights Amendment”; it attempts to end the personhood of corporations when it comes to claiming rights like free speech.

“Corporations are not people,” Mr. McGovern said. “They do not breathe. They do not have kids. They do not go off to Afghanistan and fight wars.

“This is not about restricting… freedom. It’s about empowering ordinary people.”

In regulatory matters, such as the Clean Water Act, corporations could continue to be considered individuals, Mr. McGovern said.

State Sen. James B. Eldridge, D-Acton, told the audience the bills that moneyed-interests target are “more often than not” those that attempt to protect the public from things such as environmental toxins, predatory banking and erosion of workers’ rights.

This isn’t the first time Mr. McGovern has filed such legislation, nor is he the first one to do so. As of Nov. 7, 24 U.S. senators, 73 representatives and 11 states, including Massachusetts, had voiced their support for an amendment overturning Citizens United, according to FreeSpeechforPeople.org, a group with offices in Amherst and Seattle that is working to overturn the ruling. In Massachusetts, efforts have had the support of Attorney General Martha Coakley and others.

For a constitutional amendment to succeed, it needs the support of at least two-thirds each of the House and Senate and ratification by at least 38 states. (It could also be done at a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures, but no amendment was ever passed that way, according to the National Archives.)

Mr. McGovern has the support of Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, but the Worcester Democrat acknowledged that the Republican-controlled House might not rush the bills to the floor. Nonetheless, he believes they are a basis for discussion.

An amendment might change how corporate campaign spending is governed, but whether it changes the amount of money spent on campaigns is another matter. In a July article in the New York Times Magazine, political correspondent Matt Bai noted that the increase in money spent on presidential elections has stayed fairly consistent since the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in 2002, which suggests the spending would have gone up even without Citizens United. The main difference, according to Mr. Bai, is that the Citizens United intensified the ability of groups outside a given campaign or party to influence the election. “Candidates and parties who become the vehicles of angry outsiders … don’t really have control of their own campaigns anymore,” Mr. Bai wrote.

State Rep. James J. O’Day, D-West Boylston, state Rep. Mary S. Keefe, D-Worcester, Mr. Eldridge, and John Bonifaz, co-founder and executive director of the Free Speech for People, joined Mr. McGovern at the event.

For more information about Citizens United and its aftermath, go to www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission/.